they haven’t always been the most affordable option for those who don’t have their names on their bags. Revelyst’s Foresight Sports, makers of the GC Quad which, with rival Trackman, is the most common launch monitor used on tour, now is offering its least expensive launch monitor, the fully updated GC2, which was first introduced in 2010. Retailing for only slightly more than a premium set of irons, the GC2 incorporates the high-speed camera technology, as well as the ball-flight analytics of the top-of-the-line GC Quad and GC Quadmax machines. The new GC2’s dual camera system provides data on 13 trajectory categories, including carry and total distance, ball speed, launch angle, back and side spin, peak height and descent angle. Fifteen years ago that kind of launch monitor technology cost more like $10,000. Now, with the new GC2, it’s more than 80 percent cheaper. The fully portable unit works in indoor, on-course and range environments, and the Foresight-designed ultra-high speed photometric cameras capture images at 6,000 frames per second. It’s also compatible with Foresight’s all-in-one golf simulator system known as Sim In A Box. Let us know if you’ve heard of anything else in the golf equipment world that’s now one-fifth of what it cost 16 years ago. Available at retail Oct. 12 ($1,699).

As the old saying goes, there are no pictures on the scorecard. Unfortunately, for TV personality Piers Morgan, there was a camera on the Road Hole during the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on Thursday, and it captured his absolute wormburner that nearly some civilians walking near the Old Course Hotel. 

Fortunately, though, Morgan's story has a very happy ending - his ball actually found the middle of the fairway! 

Well said, Mark. Though we'd probably qualify it as the worst televised drive to ever find the fairway at the Road Hole. Because there is zero doubt in our mind that other choppers have hit the exact same shot at the Old Course over the years. And possibly worse. 

end up as the last two standing in the match-play championship, but that happened Thursday at Portland Golf Club in Oregon. Top-seed Xiaolong (Sherry) Zhong, of China, beat Amandine Vincent, of France, 1 up, to become the first player from China to win the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur and the fourth overall from her country to win a USGA championship. Both age 50, Zhong held a 3-up lead after 10, but Vincent won Nos. 11, 15 and 16 to tie the match. Zhong won 17 and held on to tie 18 and win the match.

Zhong won both the San Franciso City Senior Women’s Championship and the Northern California Senior Women’s Am this summer and finished 17th at the U.S. Senior Women’s Open. Vincent, who played college golf at UCLA and Mississippi State in the late 1990s, was playing in her first senior event in the U.S. and won four times in France this summer.

Finau debuted the putter grip at the Biltmore Championship Asheville and is back with it at the Bank of Utah Championship. It started when Caliber Golf CEO Tim Wright spotted Finau at the Truist Championship putting with a unique grip setup on a broomstick-length putter. Finau eventually went looking for different options and landed on Caliber, whose carbon-fiber grip system gets fitted to a putter head a player already trusts. His is a Ping Scottsdale Tec Ally Blue Onset mallet.

The grip is perfectly flat, so Finau's hands, grip and putter face all point the same direction. "I just think it's easier to aim," Finau said earlier in the week in Utah.

Short putts are the main reason. According to Finau, he's always been good from 20 to 25-plus feet, but not as good closer in, where "you don't have time to manipulate the face."

The numbers explain the grip tinkering he's been doing recently, in an attempt to solve the problem. Finau ranks 122nd in strokes gained: putting, losing more than a shot per tournament on the greens. Hockey stick or not, he's betting on better aim to get things moving in the right direction.

There are two ways for a South Korean golfer to get an exemption from the military service that is otherwise mandatory for male citizens between ages 18 and 35. You can win an Olympic medal, or you can take gold in the individual or team event at the Asian Games. This week in Japan, Tom Kim is attempting the latter, and after two rounds at the Kasugai Country Club East Course, he's exactly where he stood at the end of Round 1: Two shots off the lead, now held by both Wenyi Ding and Wei-hsuan Wang. Kim shot 66 in the second round, and as a team the Koreans are in solo third at a collective 14 under, trailing the leaders Japan by just two shots. As Tod Leonard covered here at Digest, the stakes are high—compulsory military service takes between 18 and 21 months, time for practicing golf is scarce, and players like Sangmoon Bae were never quite the same after serving. At 24, Kim could have another shot at the 2028 Olympics or the 2023 Asian Games, but even that is uncertain, as Bae had to begin his service at age 29. Two rounds remain at this year's Asian Games.

The backstory to Michael Stewart’s accomplishment, however, makes it even more remarkable as he holds a share of the lead at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship. The 36-year-old Scotsman, with no status on the DP World Tour, only got into the event Monday thanks to a late sponsor’s exemption and didn’t have the chance to play a practice round at any of the three host courses. That’s because he spent Monday through Wednesday competing in a Tartan Pro Tour event, where he finished runner-up. Stewart was playing there in order to keep hold of his place on the Order of Merit that will earn him status on the Hotel Planner Tour (Europe’s version of the Korn Ferry Tour) in 2027. “It’s easy to get yourself up for this event,” said Stewart, who is making his first DP World Tour start in three years. “These courses I know pretty well, we’ve played a lot here in the past. I feel home at links golf. I grew up on a links course. I don’t mind the wind. As long as the rain stays away, we’re good to go.”

It's been six months since Haotong Li crashed out of Masters contention with a wild triple-bogey/quintuple-bogey Sunday meltdown at Augusta National. After finding Rae's Creek not once but twice on No. 12, Li goosed his approach on No. 13 long and into the bushes behind the green. It took Li three hacks to escape, before blasting his bogey putt off the green and into, you guessed it, Rae's Creek. Li, who was in the mix for a top-10 finish at the time of the implosion, shot a final-round 80 to finish in a tie for 38th.

This week, Li joined the Life on Tour podcast and discussed the incident with his trademark candor, revealing it took him almost three whole days to understand the gravity what he had just done.

"I was like 'oh sh-t, that's actually really cost me a lot. That's half mill there!" Li said of his brutal realization. "Right after that day I couldn't feel anything. I was so numb. My mental … my whole body just numb. Literally until three days later, I was 'oh sh-t, this is not great!' [laughter]"

The good news is that Li is now able to laugh it off, but you know what they say: Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.

Kihei Akina, a sophomore at BYU and NCAA Freshman of the Year is playing in this week’s Bank of Utah Championship on a sponsor’s invite. He's the latest young player to snap up an NIL deal, with Ping announcing it signed the 20-year-old Hawaii native to play 14 Ping clubs, carry a Ping bag and wear a Ping hat in all non-collegiate events. Akina, who reportedly was offered scholarships from 50 college programs after a junior career that included earning individual medalist honors three times in the Utah state high school championships, became the youngest Utah Open winner since 1934 when he won the title as a 19-year-old in 2025. He was a member of the U.S. Walker Cup team this year,. a quarterfinalist at the British Amateur, and a a Fred Haskins Award finalist.Akina finished T-16 at the Puerto Rico Open in March on the PGA Tour and set the Big 12 conference tournament scoring record with a 63 at Prairie Dunes earlier this spring.